Explaining several common problems of oculocutaneous squint

  There are many causes of squint. Once you find out that your child often looks at things crookedly, you need to take him/her to the ophthalmology and surgery departments of the hospital for examination so as not to delay the treatment due to misdiagnosis and wrong treatment. The etiology of squint is muscular, bony, ophthalmic and neurological. Myotonic squint is the most common cause of surgical squint. It is commonly caused by injury to the sternocleidomastoid muscle due to birth injury or other reasons, causing abnormal muscle contracture, etc.  Neurogenic squint is due to cerebral palsy resulting in restricted neck movement. Bony squint is due to abnormal development of the cervical spine. Ophthalmic squint is mostly caused by congenital paralysis of the eye muscles. The most common form is paralysis of the superior oblique muscle in one or both eyes. Due to impaired movement of the eye muscles in certain directions, both eyes see double (diplopia) and the child tilts his or her head to avoid diplopia. When the child adopts this head position, it reduces the discomfort due to strabismus, maintains binocular vision, and protects visual function.  In children with congenital strabismus, visual function can be protected by compensatory head positions (head tilt, neck tilt, etc.). However, this protection is generally only temporary. If the abnormalities of the eye muscles do not improve in the long term, this may lead to a “non-common diffusion of eye movements” and the involvement of other eye muscles. At this point, the head tilt may be reduced or even disappear, but by this time there is often already inhibition in one eye, resulting in monocular amblyopia and loss of stereoscopic vision in the child.  At the same time, long-term head tilting can also bring many adverse consequences. First of all, there is the facial asymmetry caused by the crooked head, with one side of the face being full and the other side being thin. Secondly, it affects the bones of the neck, causing scoliosis of the cervical spine. In addition, it may also cause developmental deformities of the mandible.  For all these reasons, the squint caused by congenital oculomotor paralysis should be treated early. At present, the ophthalmology department of the Provincial People’s Hospital treats many small patients with crooked necks every year, the youngest being 1 year and 9 months old. The treatment for the crooked head (compensatory head position) caused by “congenital paralytic strabismus” adopts a combination of strabismus correction surgery, wearing a trigeminal lens to correct residual strabismus, and wearing a neck brace to correct neck abnormalities after surgery, which has received good results for the ophthalmic squint caused by children’s strabismus.